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Impunity: Democracy and the Toll of Unchecked Harm
Aug 16, 2026
Impunity is not only the failure to punish. It is a public answer to the question of whether harm matters.
Every democracy must repeatedly answer the question of impunity. When public trust is violated, or when law itself is manipulated or attacked, penalties matter. But the deeper question is whether a society can recognize injury and prevent further harm when it has lost the ability to clearly name wrongdoing.
Impunity does not merely leave a crime unanswered. It alters the moral atmosphere. It teaches citizens what may be done without consequence, that suffering does not count, and that wrongdoers are not answerable to the world they have harmed.
A Civic and Moral Failure
Impunity is not only a legal failure but also a civic, moral, and sometimes spiritual failure. Religious communities have taught us this. When institutions devoted to conscience, care, and the sacred protect the powerful from consequence, the wound reaches beyond the individual victim into the moral order that institution claims to serve. Psychologists Jennifer Freyd and Carly Smith call this institutional betrayal: the injury done when the institutions that people depend upon fail to prevent harm, conceal it, excuse it, or respond in ways that deepen the original wound. In religious life, that betrayal can become spiritual. When the protection of authority becomes more important than the recognition of harm, the sacred itself is enlisted in betrayal.
Democracies, too, can betray. They betray not only when laws are broken but also when law loses its relation to truth. Public offices can become shields against accountability, and injury to the common world is then displaced onto retaliation against those who try to name it.
A democracy depends upon more than procedure. It depends upon a shared capacity to acknowledge that the harm has happened and that it requires an answer. Without that capacity, public life becomes morally disorganized. Citizens are asked to live inside a contradiction where injury becomes grievance, accountability is perceived as persecution, and loyalty to power is the same as loyalty to the nation.
Hannah Arendt understood that politics depends upon a common world where facts can appear, judgment can be exercised, and people can become answerable to one another. Contemporary psychoanalysis adds another dimension. We do not come to public life disembodied. We bring histories of shame, fear, injury, domination, denial, longing, and unmet repair. These histories do not remain private. They gather in institutions and organize groups. They move through what Earl Hopper called the social unconscious, the unspoken emotional life of societies that is carried beneath awareness until crisis makes it visible.
Impunity enters at this fault line. It offers relief from responsibility and displaces shame away from those who caused harm and onto those who insist that harm be recognized. Guilt becomes grievance. The injured other disappears, while injured power becomes the object of identification. The real wound is no longer the harm done but the humiliation of being held accountable.
The Systematic Inversion of Harm
The corruption of accountability is dangerous. A society can survive conflict, protest, reckoning, even the exposure of terrible wrongdoing. What it cannot survive indefinitely is the systematic inversion of harm. When those who injure are made into victims, when those who seek accountability are made into enemies, when law is used not to repair the common world but to reward the loyal, democratic life begins to lose its moral bearings.
In May 2026, the United States Department of Justice announced a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” tied to the settlement of President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax records. The fund was described as a mechanism to compensate people allegedly harmed by government weaponization and lawfare. Legal challenges followed. Critics questioned whether taxpayer money was being used to create a system of redress, or whether it risked becoming a political reward fund for those recast as victims of accountability. A federal judge temporarily blocked implementation. As this essay was finalized, Republican resistance appeared to force a pause, underscoring that democratic counter-pressure still matters.
The courts will determine the legality of the fund. But the psychological and civic question is before us. What happens when the language of harm is captured by power? What happens when grievance becomes the vehicle through which accountability is reversed, and the state participates in that displacement?
Democratic Pressure Works
In December 2012, Jyoti Singh, a young physiotherapy student in Delhi, was brutally raped and murdered. Her suffering horrified India and the world. People poured into the streets, grieving, enraged, ashamed, and unwilling to let the violence be absorbed into silence. I was doing some work in India during that period, and I remember the atmosphere not only as outrage but also as a struggle over meaning. Would this young woman’s suffering be privatized as family shame, or would it become a demand that the state, the courts, and the public recognize that harm had occurred and that law must answer?
Her parents played an extraordinary role. Her father, Badri Nath Singh, insisted that his daughter be named. He did not allow shame to rest upon her or the family. He placed responsibility where it belonged. In doing so, he helped alter the symbolic field. Jyoti Singh’s rape and death was not to be hidden as a stain upon the family. She was to be remembered as a daughter of India whose suffering exposed a failure in the nation’s conscience.
The protests that followed did not make India safe for women. No single law could do that. The wound was larger than legislation, and violence against women remains a continuing crisis. But something changed. Public grief became civic force. The Justice Verma Committee was formed. Laws were changed. The language of sexual assault was widened. The public had forced the law to answer harm.
This is not a simple story of progress. It is a story of democratic pressure. It shows what can happen when citizens refuse the psychic arrangement on which impunity depends. They refused silence. They refused the displacement of shame onto the victim. They refused the convenience of forgetting. They insisted that the state recognize injury and respond.
Toward Responsibility and Repair
Punishment is only one function of law. At its best, law helps a society keep harm, responsibility, and repair in right relation. It marks the difference between grievance and injury, between revenge and accountability, between private pain and public obligation. It says that the powerful may not define reality alone.
The insights of contemporary and feminist psychoanalysis are indispensable to understanding the dynamics of unchecked power. Jessica Benjamin has written of recognition as the fragile achievement through which one subject meets another as “real.” Domination begins when the other is no longer recognized as a full subject, but reduced to an object, obstacle, instrument, or threat. Lynne Layton reminds us that social inequalities do not remain outside the psyche. They shape what can be felt, disavowed, projected, or claimed as innocence. Donna Orange’s radical ethics insists upon the moral demand of suffering, the obligation not to turn away from the injured other.
These clinical ideas carry democratic meaning. A democracy requires the capacity to recognize the other as real. It requires institutions that can bear truth without retaliating against it. It requires enough moral courage to let shame do its proper work, not as humiliation but as a signal that one has violated a bond and must return to responsibility.
Jeffrey Rosen reminds us that the American founders understood the pursuit of happiness not as the pursuit of pleasure but as a lifelong discipline of virtue, character, self-command, and responsibility to the common good. That older moral vocabulary matters now. Democracy cannot endure on rights alone if rights are severed from conscience. Liberty, detached from responsibility, becomes exemption from consequence. Grievance, detached from truth, becomes a substitute for public life.
Punishment alone cannot answer the question before us. The deeper question is whether harm will be recognized, whether responsibility will remain where it belongs, and whether law will serve the public.
Impunity is seductive because it promises freedom without accountability. But that promise is false. Impunity asks whether or not harm matters. A democracy may answer through silence, delay, reversal, or reward. The wrong answer can have unbearable consequences.
A democracy reveals itself in what it does with harm. It may deny it, bury it, monetize it, spiritualize it, or turn it into grievance. Or it may recognize it, grieve it, investigate it, legislate in response to it, and create conditions in which trust can become possible again.
That work is never finished. It is legal work, civic work, psychological work, and spiritual work. It asks citizens and institutions alike to resist the comfort of innocence when innocence is purchased through denial. It asks us to remember that responsibility is not the enemy of freedom. It is one of freedom’s necessary forms.
When harm no longer matters, democracy itself is at risk. When harm is recognized, responsibility restored, and repair made thinkable, the common world can begin again.
Gaea Logan is a British-American relational psychoanalyst, educator, and writer. She is the executive director of the International Institute for Trauma Studies in Ukraine, chair of the Task Force on Dialogue and Peace, and a fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association.
This article was originally published as part of From Many, We, a Charles F. Kettering Foundation blog series that highlights the insights of thought leaders dedicated to the idea of inclusive democracy.
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State Gerrymandering Surge Ends Path to Proportional Representation
Aug 15, 2026
“We are in an era of maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time. And we are going to keep the pressure on . . .” –Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Leader, April 22, 2026
Borrowing a slogan from the Trump White House, Jeffries was describing mid-decade gerrymandering in Texas, California, Virginia, and half a dozen other states, with others queued up behind them.
This new escalatory dynamic in American politics closes the door to one path I have long hoped would lead to US proportional representation: state-by-state adoption for use in legislatures.
The state-by-state path to democracy reform is time-honored. It has racked up win after win for automatic voter registration, early voting, vote by mail, same-day voter registration, state voting rights acts, and independent redistricting commissions. The ranked choice voting movement, following an analogous local-up playbook, has won adoption in 39 localities and two states. The overlapping proportional representation movement—for many, the ultimate destination for all election reform—counts six localities using it and has grand ambitions for local and state victories.
Continual gerrymandering ends state-led independent commissions
Tragically, the 2025 advent of mid-decade redistricting has mooted the states-up playbook for some two reforms. Notably, it has killed independent redistricting on a state-by-state basis. This strategy “proved truly disastrous,” in the words of Princeton University’s Paul Starr. He went on: “Democratic states have bound themselves to be fair to Republicans, but Republican states have not reciprocated.” It was unilateral disarmament by blue states, reducing Democrats’ chances of controlling the US House as red states maximize their gerrymanders.
So when Texas broke norms with a naked political power grab by redistricting in 2025, California responded, tit for tat. It suspended its independent redistricting commission and redrew its district lines to counteract Texas. More red states jumped in. Several blue states, regretting their independent redistricting laws, are now seeking ways to emulate California by suspending their independent commissions, and gerrymandering is on the way to becoming a continual process.
Continual gerrymandering also moots state-led proportional representation
Not noted but equally true is that maximum warfare-style redistricting has mooted proportional representation for state legislatures. In both blue and red states, legislative proportional representation would be tantamount to unilateral disarmament for the majority party, which makes it DOA in most states.
Consider Massachusetts. Democrats have won majorities of 62 percent in recent presidential elections, as shown the figure. They have leveraged this electoral majority into control of 81 percent of seats in the state house, 88 percent of seats in the state senate, and 100 percent of the state’s US House delegation. The same pattern of escalating Democratic control is evident in other blue states, such as Illinois. It is mirrored in reverse in red states such as Mississippi and Wyoming. In fact, this pattern of rising party shares from presidential vote to state house to state senate to US House shows up almost everywhere, as I have documented.
PIC
In almost every state, proportional representation in the legislature would shrink the majority party’s caucus and increase the minority party’s. The majority would therefore have less power to gerrymander US House seats.
For example, if California’s state legislature were proportional to its 2024 presidential vote, the state would not have been able to counteract Texas’s mid-decade redistricting in late 2025. A proportionally represented California legislature would be 58 percent Democratic, short of the two-thirds supermajority legally required to redistrict the Golden State mid-decade. At present, Sacramento’s two chambers are 75 percent Democratic.
In a future of biennial gerrymandering, proportional representation in state legislatures would kneecap majority parties, so neither majority legislators nor voters would likely support it.
Ways forward: Outlier states, localities, federal, intermediate reforms
A few outliers may emerge. In deep red and deep blue states with small delegations such as Wyoming and Vermont, the majority party has no worries of losing House seats. In a swing state such as Michigan, where the parties and legislators are evenly balanced, a proportional legislature would not obviously advantage either side. But overall, as I’ve detailed, unrelenting partisan warfare precludes winning proportional representation in most state legislatures.
For reformers like me who are devoted to winning proportional representation, the race may not be over, but it’s definitely changed tracks. Focus can move to local wins or to federal proportional representation, in the event of a possible national pro-democracy trifecta in Washington, DC, in 2029. (Two intriguing federal scenarios are here and here.)
Another worthy strategy is to turn toward open state-level doors as intermediate steps. Unified all-candidate primaries, for example, may lower the temperature of partisan conflict without harming either party’s chance for control. De-escalation through such reforms might, in time, clear a path to proportional representation.
But for now—in this time of maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time—reformers would do well to acknowledge that state-by-state campaigns for legislative proportional representation are no longer a winning strategy.
Alan Durning is executive director of Seattle-based Sightline Institute, the independent, nonprofit think tank.
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Can Independents Run Through the Jungle?
Aug 15, 2026
Last week, the independent movement’s road to Washington hit a snag in, well, the other Washington. One promising campaign for the US House has ended, and another teeters, and all of it raises the question of whether the sort of jungle primaries they face can be conducive to success for nonparty candidates, and what they might take to successfully navigate moving forward.
In Washington’s 1st Congressional District, located just northeast of Seattle, independent James Etzkorn finished 3rd in his primary race, garnering just over seven percent of the vote. Suzan DelBene, the seven-term incumbent and DCCC Chair, came in first with 53%, while Republican Mary Silva - the lone R in the seven-candidate field - earned about 27%. Several Democrats running to the left of DelBene finished lower in the ranks, sharing the remainder of the vote.
In the 5th District, encompassing Spokane and the Eastern quarter of the state, things are a bit less clear as of the time of this writing. Michael Baumgartner, the Republican incumbent, has advanced with about half the vote — that much, we know. But Nate Powell, a veteran firefighter union captain running as an independent, is still mathematically alive, trailing Democrat Carmela Conroy for second by just under three percentage points. Unfortunately, over 90% of the vote is in, so things don’t look great right now.
According to betting markets and limited polling, these results aren’t surprising. Neither Etzkorn nor Powell were expected to advance, and neither underperformed. But in the wake of their eliminations from the November ballot, we should be asking: did they lose despite the nonpartisan primary structure, that favorite of so many reformers? Or are these nonpartisan jungles yet another obstacle that makes it harder for independents to get elected?
The Parties Keep Partying
The Washington results set up a pair of deeply unexciting November contests in both the solidly Democratic WA-1 and the solidly Republican WA-5. By all estimates, Conroy and Silva are not going to win. Their parties and their supporters are going to spend a bunch more money on their campaigns, in part out of hope that they’ll inspire turnout and boost more viable down-ballot races for the State Legislature, but largely because that’s just the way they’ve always done it.
The shame is what could have been. Powell actually held a six-point edge over his Republican incumbent according to a July Tavern Research poll, winning 53-47 in a hypothetical head-to-head. Those numbers, according to Tavern themselves, are “soft,” given the low level of voter information and name ID in the race, but the prospects still seemed strong for one of the most competitive House runs in Eastern Washington in some time.
As for Etzkorn, his would have been a more uphill battle, but his momentum had been building. Just a few weeks ago, Etzkorn was among the eight candidates invited to Joe Manchin’s inaugural Independent Leadership Council summit, and that network could have proven critical in garnering funding and media attention for an underdog effort against a marquee Democrat opponent. At the very least, it would have been a lot more interesting than anything the D+15 district had seen in some time.
Such is life sometimes in these nonpartisan, so-called “jungle” primaries, filled with large fields of candidates that voters struggle to keep track of. Though all voters are welcome to participate in these events — a big part of why the structure appeals to the reform crowd — it’s still an extra election to be aware of and take part in. Primaries, even nonpartisan ones, inevitably feature lower turnout than general elections, overrepresenting both affluent voters (who have an easier time making it out to the polls twice in a season) and highly partisan ones, while underrepresenting independents Many of the voters who do come out are working with limited information and voting along party lines, which is bad news for nonparty candidates trying to catch their attention.
A Way Through the Wilderness?
Astute politicos may remember that another state held nonpartisan primaries back in June: California. House efforts there had to contend with a headline-dominating governors’ race up the ballot, and a few notable independent runs ended then and there: Karen Matthews, a Navy veteran and Independent Candidates Action endorsee, saw lackluster support in deep-red CA-23, ultimately finishing fourth behind two democrats and the incumbent. Independent Nina Linh got drowned out by the noise in the freshly redistricted CA-40, ending up with just over 1% of the vote while two incumbent Republicans (again, redistricting) advanced. Only Kevin Kiley in CA-6 advanced, but it’s worth noting that Kiley is an incumbent himself, originally elected as a Republican before leaving his party, which allowed him to eschew some of the outsider disadvantages and break through the noise.
There’s a cruel duality to the jungle format. On one hand, there’s the prospect of a head-to-head matchup against the favorite (typically the incumbent), free of any possible spoiler stigma. To get there, though, nonparty candidates need to build prominence in crowded fields and appeal to an electorate with significantly more partisanship and less information than the general.
With all of this in mind, the independents in Washington came pretty close. For Powell’s campaign in particular, the near-miss may pave the way for a future run, with more credibility, more name recognition, and ultimately a better shot to win.
Establishing a stronger national independent brand may make a huge difference in how viable the jungle road is. If even lower-information voters are aware that independents are running, that they can compete and win even in stronghold districts where the second party can’t, and that they can bring about a fundamental shift to our political incentives, then both the perceived viability (and resulting media coverage) and the actual viability may change. And that’s exactly why independent successes this season are so vital.
Nathan Smolensky is a political messaging and communications strategist specializing in independent campaigns, and the author of Common Ground from the Ground Up.
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Democratic Party Suicide
Aug 15, 2026
A recent New York Times article, "Moderate Democrats Prepare for 'War' Against an Ascendant Left," describes a disturbing perspective among mainstream, moderate, centrist Democrats. It is disturbing for many reasons.
First, there is the practical impact. If indeed mainstream Democrats attack socialist Democrats in a sustained, organized manner, there is only one possible result: the defeat of the Party in 2026 and the renewed vigor of Trump and his MAGA allies. Especially when combined with the all-out effort that AIPAC will mostly take to support Republican candidates running against Democratic candidates who are socialists. (See my article, "The Unscrupulousness of AIPAC.")
If Party leaders, such as Obama, Clinton, and others, do not speak out forcefully against this misguided effort, the result could be catastrophic for the Party.
But beyond the practical impact, there is the existential impact. Democrats have for years been struggling without success to define what the Party stands for. As I have frequently quoted, after John Kerry lost the 2004 election, former Vice-President Mondale said, “We really need to work on the question of what we are for. Unless we have a vision and the arguments to match, I don’t think we’re going to truly connect with the American people“ And this was after a presidential election—the quadrennial defining moment for the Party!
The Democratic Party lost to Trump in 2016 and 2020, not because of the rabidness of Trump's MAGA followers or his magnetism, but because the Party had redirected its attention. In modern times, the Party had always been the party of the people, of the workers. And they returned the favor; those were the Americans that provided the multi-ethnic and multi-color coalition that made the Party the powerhouse of American political life for most of the 20th century.
But after Ronald Reagan's 1980 election, two unrelated things happened that caused the Party's traditional voting coalition to split. First, in the aftermath of the election, there was much confusion regarding how the Party should regain its footing. At the same time, Democrats started using PACs to direct corporate funding to centrist candidates not tied to New Deal populism and principles and more focused on working with industry. This desire for corporate $, which only increased with time as campaigns became more expensive, had an inevitable policy impact. You can't seek major contributions from corporations without providing them with access and policy influence.
The Democratic Leadership Council, of which Clinton was a part, was established in 1985 to reposition the Party toward the "center" and give it broader national appeal. It didn't sound like they were abandoning Democrats' traditional base; they wanted to add to it. They said they were abandoning the leftward shift of the 60s to attract the White middle-class voter, but what they were really doing was shifting toward industry interests. But as the saying goes, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Pleasing corporations meant at least backing off somewhat from more liberal positions that protect the people. What the DLC was really doing was moving the Party to the right.
And indeed, once this change in the Party was solidified, Democrats' actions in power changed. For example, President Clinton became an advocate of free trade agreements, which were anathema to unions and blue-collar workers. Clinton signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act—finance industry regulations—pushed by the Republican-controlled Congress. When some Democrats tried to reinstate Glass-Steagall after the 2008 stock market crash and the recession that followed, Obama and centrist Democrats didn't even allow it to come to a vote.
One result of this change was that the American blue-collar worker was more or less left out to dry—not purposefully, but as a practical effect. As they lost jobs and their wages stagnated because of globalization, they became more and more alienated from the Democratic Party. This was a major factor in the rise of the Tea Party and ultimately in the desertion of large numbers of blue-collar workers, including people of color, from the Party to vote for Trump.
The second thing that happened in the 80s is that the Party, after passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, became more focused on the struggles of women and people of color to pursue their rights to life, liberty, and happiness. The focus was on enabling equal opportunity in college and job applications, among other things, which morphed into the Affirmative Action agenda, which not only provided equal opportunity but also gave preference over an equally qualified White male. The idea behind Affirmative Action programs is understandable, but unfortunately they replaced one wrong with another. And ultimately, the courts declared that such programs were unconstitutional.
Both the effects of globalization and Affirmative Action alienated large numbers of blue-collar White workers. They became angry, lost trust in the Party, and, in subsequent elections, voted more Republican. Until in Trump's campaign, a significant block of blue-collar workers—primarily White but also people of color—voted for Trump, resulting in his winning the Presidency.
As I have written, it is urgent for the Party to return to our founding principles, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, focus once again on the people, and regain its status as the majority party in the United States. See my article, "URGENT: What Democrats Must Do to Win the Midterm Elections."
This is what Democratic socialists are trying to do. And this is why they are having such success. It's all about the people. It is a message that resonates. This may be a repudiation of the Party establishment of the past 40 years, which grew out of the Democratic Leadership Council.
But this is not a turn to the left; this is not a Socialist revolution. (As I've written elsewhere, Sanders, Mamdani, and others are not Socialists in that they don't argue for government ownership of the means of production; they are socialists only in the sense that they think that government should be more focused on the rights of people.)
The Democratic Leadership Council was a turn to the right; what Sanders and Mamdani are urging is a return to the center of the traditional Democratic Party. This is a return to our founding principles, to the nation's center. This is a return to American values. See my article, "What Are American Values."
Ronald L. Hirsch is a teacher, legal aid lawyer, survey researcher, nonprofit executive, consultant, composer, author, and volunteer. He is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Chicago Law School and the author of We Still Hold These Truths. Read more of his writing at www.PreservingAmericanValues.com
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